October 2017

Today I had the pleasure of venturing into the heart of Venice California and into the studios of MAP Design Labs. At the helm is Melissa Painter, Creative Director and Innovation Strategist for the company who was kind enough to give me a hands on demo of MOVE Studio. This was my first foray into Mixed Reality and I was pleasantly surprised by the lightweight Acer headset and how much more immersive it was then expected.

The journey into MOVE Studio started with a colorful world of motion capped dancers around me, both my controllers were waves of paint and as I moved my arms and legs, dancers would ride the paint trails tailored to my movement. As I bent my knees, objects and dancers would appear larger and smaller which was really fascinating. To add to the visual experience, the audio was dynamically programmed so as I moved, it changed and adapted around me. Essentially everyone has a unique experience because of this, the audio and visuals will be different each time depending on where you move and what you do.

MOVE Studio really captures something unique that I haven’t seen yet in this space, it’s not a game and it’s not a sit-down experience. It’s a visually stimulating experience that merges art, dance, and choreography together. The project itself encourages you to move around and dance, and the more you do, the more it resonates around you.

There are multiple modes that take you to different environments and there’s also a sandbox mode which gives you the ability to make your own experience by placing dancers of all sizes around the environment. MOVE Studio is an experimental and magical experience, and for anyone with a mixed reality headset, this one is fun for all ages.

MOVE Studio is free on the Microsoft store if you have a mixed reality headset:

Space Pirate Trainer is a simple arcade style VR shooter for the HTC Vive/Oculus Rift released on October 12th, 2017. With the majority of games these days, trailers always make you think the game is 1000x better then it usually is, so personally I wasn’t expecting too much from this, and boy was I wrong.

The game itself is really everything I wanted, simple to learn with one main menu to choose options from and within seconds you’re in the game and playing. Also when you start the game, your controllers are instantly guns which is another bonus, easy to shoot at the menu system and quickly jump into gameplay.

Another thing that’s nice for beginners to VR is the stationary movement. Some games require you to move around in the game with a controller which takes a bit of getting used to and still makes some people dizzy at times, with Space Pirate Trainer, you don’t have to worry about movement besides dodging, for the most part you’re in one position and just trying not to get killed as you battle evil space bots from the top of the Space Pirate Trainer platform. As simple as the game is, it’s easy to learn but hard to master, which makes it fun and addictive and honestly hard to put down, not to mention global online leaderboards for the super competitive nerd rangers out there.

For the game modes you have a variety of options to choose from.

First you have Arcade which gives you 3 lives total, with waves getting harder each round.

There’s also Explorer Mode which gives you health regen but only 50% points.

Hardcore Mode is also fun but doesn’t include bullet time, making it harder to dodge projectiles.

Last is Oldschool which is my personal favorite, the waves start out easy and get more difficult as you progress.

As for weapons, you have a bunch of options and can change weapons on the fly with your touch controller. Weapons range from the Quarkcannon, Pulse Laser, Shotworks, Railgun, Raygun, Ion Grenade and Brawler.

For $14.99 on Steam, Space Pirate Trainer is a solid addition to any VR collection and well worth the price tag.

Today was a big day on the VR front as Mark Zuckerberg spoke at the Oculus Connect 4 Conference earlier in San Jose, which was also live-streamed on Facebook. For news, the Oculus Rift price will be permanently dropping down to $399, which effectively improves on the Oculus Summer Sale for anyone who missed it.

One of the reasons for the continued price drop was the mention of a new wireless standalone headset called “Oculus Go”, which will be coming in at around $199 in early 2018. Granted the Oculus Go won’t compare to the Oculus Rift just yet, but should be compared more to Gear VR and a step in the right direction for wireless VR in general.

Having lower end wireless VR will increase mainstream adoption at a much quicker rate which is why we’re seeing price drops across the board from the higher end HMD’s like the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. If all goes well, higher end wireless VR should become a reality towards the end of 2018 but for now cheaper hardware is needed and is a good thing for the VR landscape to grow. This is a big step for Facebook and if sales take off for the Oculus Go, it could be a game changer for the company.

Rift drops to $399 with new Wireless ‘Oculus Go’ Headset Forthcoming was last modified: October 11th, 2017 by Evan Marcus